The Truth Be Told
by Vivienne Grainger - Bleach
Summary: They hate each other so much it's almost inevitable that they become friends.


If you want to begin to like someone, do them a favor. This perverse truth of relationship seems to apply to the Seiretei as well as the human world ... and even to Kenpachi Zaraki.

Kenpachi Zaraki is one of my favorite characters, but we don't actually know a great deal about him. And if Byakuya Kuchiki were ever in a situation which robbed him of his stiffness and his dignity, would he vanish in a puff of smoke?

A "ryokan" is a traditional Japanese inn.

_Bleach_ belongs to Tite Kubo. The plot and dialogue belong to me, but the characters and situation are his. Not for profit, just for love, etc.

Warning: people get drunk, talk about straight sex, are covered in gore, get medically naked, commit and suffer violence. Minor edits made August 15, 2009.

* * *

Byakuya Kuchiki lay on his back, dying in the dirt.

He considered the causative events leading up to his current predicament, and found only simple bad luck. His death seemed a high price to pay for simple bad luck; but then, the unlucky throughout the ages have had this thought.

His musings kept Kuchiki preternaturally calm until he coughed, which felt like it tore his chest apart: monstrous, annihilating, literally breathtaking pain. He was submerged into his suffering, so much so that he did not note the wet impacts of sword combat nearby.

However, those noises had been very brief. The source of them, Kenpachi Zaraki, knew he needed to get this fight over with fast, sacrificing fun to speed, once he saw Kuchiki's graceless flop into the dirt. Going down like that, if Kuchiki wasn't dead he was badly hurt. Zaraki put all his effort into lethality, none into self-defense.

Thirty-seven seconds later, he was liberally bloodied but his opponents were a threat no more. He turned to Kuchiki.

At his back, seven Hollows dissolved into black thread, dissipated in the night air.

Kuchiki saw Zaraki, knew he was there, but then the breath gurgled in the wounded man's throat, and he began to fight for air.

Zaraki hastily turned the other onto his side and gave him a good thump right between the shoulder blades with his huge open hand. Kuchiki cried out in pain, but spat out a swampy throatful of blood, and began to breathe more easily.

Zaraki faced him, squatted down to be in Kuchiki's visual range, and watched a track of fresh redness begin to leak from the corner of the other's mouth.

When Kuchiki's eyes came back to here-and-now, taichou of the Eleventh Division said to taichou of the Sixth, "Dammit, princess, how'm I gonna get you to help in time?"

"Not my problem," Kuchiki panted, "yet." He shut his eyes.

"_Yet_. Ya kill me." Zaraki put an arm under Kuichi's shoulders, the other under his knees, stood with the smaller man in his embrace.

The countryside changed in blinks of an eye as Zaraki ran at top speed. He recalled the taichou of Fourth Division saying once that jolting transport tended to be a strain on the injured. He hoped that would not apply to Kuchiki, who probably couldn't take one more insult.

His burden stirred in his arms. "You can't ... flash step ... slow as ... mud," Kuchiki said, faintly.

Zaraki glanced down at him. "Princess, you get ta be my teacher somehow?"

Kuchiki managed a small smile. _Gettin' awful blue under th' eyes_, Zaraki thought. _–Blue-blooded?_

_Where th' hell'd that come from? I ain't focused. Damn' prissy idiot's right. I can get more speed._

Zaraki used a trick taught him by Ikkaku Madarame, and set the tempo of his steps a little faster than was comfortable. He wished Yachiru Kusajichi's tiny hands were pulling at his hair for guidance. They were within sight of the walls of The Court of Pure Souls, though, and even he could not get lost.

Yachiru was not riding his shoulder because, when Zaraki and Kuchiki began giving each other the stink-eye in that ryokan, Zaraki sent Ikkaku Madarame to put his fukutaichou to bed. Kuchiki had invented an errand for his own lieutenant, Renji Abarai. The two taichou finished the drinks in front of them, agreed on a place to meet outside the Court's walls, and left, Kuchiki first, Zaraki a few minutes later.

All this subterfuge was necessary because Soul Reapers were strictly forbidden to duel. General Yamamato was known to be particularly hot on the subject, because the fines involved were heavy enough to be a real nuisance. He had said publicly that Hollows were eager enough to kill his troops; the troops themselves did not need to help.

And as for a duel between two taichou, who should be setting the example for members of their Divisions! The General would likely use their heads as bookends, _after_ the fines had beggared them.

Despite these considerable deterrents, a duel was probably inevitable once the two had consumed sufficient saké, Kuchiki called Zaraki "oaf," and Zaraki responded with "princess." Following it up with "ya prissy idiot" was overkill, but then Kuchiki had come back with "lout." Zaraki thought that honors were about even; the truth had been told all around, and not for the first time.

Alcohol. What a wonderful drug.

Here and now, Kuchiki gasped, "How ... many?"

Zaraki glanced down at him. "Seven," he said briefly. "Th' first one hitcha, and th' others all turned on ya."

The bouncing of Zaraki's huge frame jolted the breath in and out of Kuchiki's aching chest. As well, the pounding of Zaraki's immense heart kept up a counterpoint throb to his own pain. Kuchiki told himself he wouldn't remember much of this trip later. That proved to be correct, but failed in the present to provide any comfort.

For his part, Zaraki let his body perform its task without involving his mind. Running, running, running, all the while monitoring the labored breathing of the wounded Soul Reaper in his arms. Listening to ragged bubbling inhalations. Breathe, damn ya, princess.

Finally, through the gates, crossing the roofs ...

He leapt down into the streets, shouted at a nearby member of the Fifth Division he didn't know by name, "Where's Fourth Division?"

The woman pointed, shouted something. Zaraki leapt again without taking time to understand.

Zaraki burst through the door of Fourth Division HQ and shouted, "Hey! I need some help here!"

Members of the Fourth Division swarmed from every door, any direction. One of them shoved a gurney into Zaraki's thighs, and he laid Kuchiki down. Fourth Division surrounded the fallen Soul Reaper and pushed him away.

Only one small Fourth, a woman he had never seen before, remained. "Zaraki-taichou? This way, please." The woman made a palm-up gesture down a hallway.

"Most a' this is Kuchiki's blood," Zaraki said, standing foursquare where he was, gesturing at the gore dripping from his chest and belly.

"But not all of it," the woman said, "and you've been exerting yourself while you were wounded. –This way, please." This time it was an order, not a request, and Zaraki found his feet obeying while his brain intended otherwise.

_These Fourth Division women, not one of 'em as high as my armpit, they's witches, every one of 'em. And just ta prove it - _"How'd ya know about that'?"

"Exertion changes your energy. Once you're wounded, it depletes your reiatsu in a way which is unmistakable." The witch - er, healer - swept aside a curtain over a cubicle. "You present both the energy of having been wounded, and exerting yourself afterward. Lie down here, please."

"Here" was a high metal table. On his way to horizontal, Zaraki said, "Why ain't you with Kuchiki?"

"The major healers are with Kuchiki-taichou. They don't need me, and you could use a little help." She smiled gently, made eye contact with him. "Tell me how this happened."

He started in on the sorry tale, editing the beginning to "We went out ta train together." Telling it distracted him from the series of complex gestures she made, until the last one brought her index finger to his forehead.

"Hey!" The tiny point of contact was leverage enough to keep him from sitting up, and he began to thrash.

The witch laid her other hand on his arm. "Zaraki-taichou, please relax. I only want to give you some support."

"Will it take long?" he said, subsiding grudgingly. "I gotta lotta papers on my desk."

"It won't seem long at all, Zaraki-taichou." She pushed the energy her gestures had summoned into him.

He opened his mouth to ask her what she meant by "seem," and went out like a light.

The healer grinned. _So_ much better than an administrative job ...

* * *

A lot of time passed. Zaraki, waking, knew this before he roused completely. What yanked him into full awareness was a sweet smell he encountered only rarely, because it took coaxing Yachiru Kusajichi into a bathtub and applying soap to her small filthy self. Even Kenpachi Zaraki could not achieve this often.

The little girl was curled up into the crook between his neck and shoulder, sleeping quite soundly.

He couldn't remember where they were, or how they got there. But the signs pointed to friendly territory.

Both he and Yachiru had been bathed, although he did not smell as good as she did; she wore pajamas, hard to get her into even when, as now, they were pink; he wore his eye patch, bandages here and there, and fresh night clothing that was not his own; he knew this last to be true because he preferred to sleep in his eye patch. Period. Anyone who roused him from a sound sleep deserved what they got, in Zaraki's mind.

He felt monumentally hung over - nothing unusual there. His chest and belly ached with newly-inflicted wounds; he had been wounded many times in his life, so that was not unusual either. He felt no hot throb of infection, which meant either that the wounds were fresh, or that someone had taken better-than-average care of him.

His haori, with its emblem of rank, and his shikahoushou hung on hooks across the room. The haori boasted more tears, but had been cleaned of blood. _Nice'a somebody_, he thought.

Okay, hospital somewhere, friendly territory. Fine. Zaraki turned onto one side, which hurt him, and curled an arm protectively around his little girl; she stirred but did not rouse. Taichou of the Eleventh Division closed his eyes again.

* * *

The next time Zaraki woke, Ikkaku Madarame sat in the chair next to his bed, elbows on knees, hands clasped, index fingers to his chin, watching him intently. Yachiru was gone.

"Third? Where's Yachiru?" Zaraki said, running a hand over his muzzy head. His lank hair was out of its spikes and flat to the skull under his touch, which hurt: it felt like the last spiteful sting of a hangover. But he'd been asleep too long for a hangover to last - hadn't he?

"She asked me to sit with you while she caught up on some paperwork," the bald man said. "She'll be back this afternoon."

Zaraki yawned, and with the extra oxygen memory came flooding back. The duel. The Hollows. Kuchiki. Kuchiki! "Kuchiki?" he asked his third seat.

"He'll recover, but he's not awake yet." Ikkaku pulled himself up, sat more comfortably in the chair. "You remember what happened, Cap?"

"A' course I remember. Buncha hollows came through at once. One of 'em got Kuchiki an' the other six turned on 'im once he was wounded. I was too far away ta stop it, but I got there in time ta kill 'em."

Zaraki's third seat said, "Oh," thinking that Kenpachi had left out the part about saving the other taichou's life, and omitted something Ikkaku knew very well to be true - that the taichou had gone out together to duel to the death.

Ikkaku in his turn omitted that this mutual endeavor had led to both taichou being deliberately kept unconscious, and for good measure chained to their beds, during the time it took to ascertain that no duel had taken place.

Ikkaku failed to fill his superior officer in on this not because he objected to dying, but simply because he saw little point to doing it right that minute in Zaraki's hospital room. Zaraki would inevitably be told of the suspicions entertained about him; Ikkaku was quite happy to let some unfortunate other person do that, and then pick up the pieces, if any were left. Sometimes cleaning up after Zaraki required only a mop.

Zaraki, meanwhile, got up on his elbows, which hurt him. "'m goin' ta my quarters," he said to Ikkaku. Pain, in Zaraki's life, was no reason to stop doing something you really wanted to do ...

Alarmed, Ikkaku rose and came to him, put an arm behind his shoulders. "Cap, no. You're not ready yet."

"Hell with that. 'm goin.'" With his third seat's assistance, Zaraki struggled halfway up to a sitting position, to which both the hangover and his abused belly muscles objected with teeth and claws. At that point, every ounce of energy he had deserted him, and he realized that his formidable will would not, in this instance, get him where he wanted to be.

He scowled, and said grudgingly, "I'll just rest a while first."

Once Zaraki lay flat again, Ikkaku sped out of the room to return with the same member of the Fourth who had knocked Zaraki on his butt to begin with. "You!" the patient growled.

"Me," she said imperturbably. "I won't release you, Zaraki-taichou. You need to stay here."

He growled and looked up at the ceiling. It did not provide evasive instructions: if Fourth Division said you stayed, you stayed. That - thing - that ran Twelfth Division was reputed to have given them the skills and tools to enforce their wishes.

The woman was silent for a moment, hands out and palms open toward the injured man, assessing his state. "What have you arranged in the way of after-care?" the healer said to Ikkaku.

"Somebody'll always be with him," Ikkaku said, "until you clear him to be alone."

Zaraki got to his elbows again. "Hey! I don't need ta be babysat!"

She tilted her head to one side and scrutinized him for so long it made him flush. "Sorry, but you do, and you will for a while yet." She helped him back down, which only made him madder because it meant that Fourth Division trumped Eleventh yet again. Zaraki glowered.

The glower failed to set the healer's hair on fire, and she went to the end of the bed, picking up the clipboard fastened there. "I would like you to stay for three more days. I won't promise that you'll go home then. We'll have to see how you do."

Zaraki deepened his glower. "Why're ya askin' when ya could just knock me out again?"

He found, as many had before him, that the witches of the Fourth Division (especially the ones who didn't stand as high as his armpit) were tougher than he. This one she looked him straight in the eye and said calmly, "It's not good for you, but I'll do it if you make it necessary."

Zaraki, his bluff called, kept the glower, but the steam went out of it.

The healer, unmoved, continued, "You can do paperwork while you're in here, but no sparring, no heavy exercising."

Taichou of the Eleventh Division sighed, put away the glower, and negotiated his way along this fresh curl of crashing disaster. "If I can't go home I wanna see Kuchiki."

"I said no sparring, and anyway, he's not awake yet."

Zaraki snorted. "Way he fights, it wouldn't make a lotta difference. I still wanna see him."

* * *

Ikkaku helped him into the wheelchair, and pushed him along the corridor. Zaraki hated that. He wanted to be on his feet, independent of anyone. But not only had getting out of bed tired him, the wounds in his belly made it hard to move his legs, hard for those legs to support him; and the claw marks on his chest had done the same for his arms. He needed the help.

_No sparring, hah. I might be up ta signin' a few papers, but right now I ain't good fer much else. So much fer being Kenpachi. _

A short distance along the hall, in a room smelling of blood but otherwise identical to Zaraki's own, Byakuya Kuchiki lay in windowless half-light, long thin hands still beside him. His hair was coming out of its stringent regulation, some of the black strands sticking up straight, others flowing away from the white face onto the pillow.

Kuchiki's chest and belly were covered in bandages to whose surface blood had crept. He seemed to have flattened into the bed which held him, and the flesh of his face had pulled away from the chiseled nose, leaving an impression of the skull beneath the skin.

Dying men look like that, Ikkaku thought. But the Fourth kept saying that he'd recover.

There was an envelope of blue haze about Kuchiki, generated by a member of the Fourth Division who sat in lotus in the corner. Both of the Eleventh Division members knew that they were not to speak to the healer, nor to touch the patient.

Kenpachi Zaraki, the only person who had ever defeated Ikkaku Madarame in battle, sat immobile by Kuchiki's bedside for so long that the bald man wondered if taichou had tired himself beyond speech. But finally the big guy shifted in the chair, and said, "Get better, princess. It's just bad luck landed ya here," and then, "Let's go, Third," to Ikkaku.

Zaraki knew that those who lie unconscious still hear the words said around them. He knew this because he remembered quite well what various persons had said about him while he was out. He had no way to take names then but he was looking for the owners of a few voices. He would enjoy himself when he found them; they would not.

He remembered one voice quite clearly, and knew already who its owner was. That one, though, he had no quarrel with: she had spoken to him, not just about him.

An' what the hell, it couldna hurt ta speak a few words o' encouragement to th' princess.

On returning to his room, Zaraki slept a long while, he knew, although he had neither clock nor window by which to track time. He felt better physically on waking, but he still had very little energy.

Hunger was another matter.

Zaraki briefly considered eating his bed sheets, but found the bell to summon help pinned to one corner of them. The door had barely opened before he said, "I'm real hungry," to the arriving Fourth Division member; he hadn't seen this one before.

"Back in a minute with food," she replied, and vanished.

She arrived with a standard meal about the same time Retsu Unohana came into his room. Zaraki looked at the Fourth Division taichou, looked at the tray, and dealt with important matters first: "Ya tryin' a' starve me to death?"

Unohana looked up from the clipboard at the end of his bed and grinned: Zaraki's appetites were notorious throughout the Sereitei but her staff person had apparently forgotten this about him. "If you're still hungry when you finish, we'll get you more, Zaraki-taichou. –As much as he wants," she added to the other member of the Fourth. "Might as well get him a couple more right now." She went back to his clipboard, and the other healer left.

Zaraki consumed the first meal with one eye on Unohana. She flipped his clipboard shut about halfway through the second main course and said, "How are you feeling?"

"Better. Still hungry. No energy." He paused. "I remember whatcha said ta me while I was out."

"Oh?" she said. "I was with you a number of times. What do you remember?"

To her amusement, he blushed. What he remembered most vividly wasn't words at all.

He had endured several painful changes of wound dressings at the hands of others. Seeing him tense at her touch, Unohana had used something that made the adhesive let go of his skin, changed the dressings gently, and pulled warmth up over his cold body when she was done.

Then she put her hand to his cheek for a moment, and left.

Kindness and consideration, let alone the comfort those warmed bedclothes had brought him, were rare commodities in Zaraki's life. And simple human contact, skin-to-skin, happened to him not at all unless it came from Yachiru, around whom he had the duty of being a parent, from someone with whom he was involved sexually, or from a male-bonding ritual embarked upon with members of his Division, and that was a lot more likely to be a fist-bump than a hand to the cheek.

A hand to the cheek: he remembered this simple gesture of caring from someone in none of those categories.

Now, he mumbled of another of her visits, "Ya asked me why I didn' fight back."

"I thought perhaps you guessed how grave Kuchiki-taichou's wounds were." She paused. "You're the kenpachi; you could have come through that fight unscathed had you wished. Knowing that Kuchiki was in trouble was the only thing I could think of that made sense."

"Yeah, s'what it was."

She smiled at him again. _He's a lot smarter than people think he is, and he's got a lot more guts than good sense. –But we knew that._ "Can we move on to your health now?"

"Yeah, sure," he said wearily. _More freakin' lectures ..._

"You're doing well, about where we think you should be in the recovery process. My healer has talked with you about staying here for another three days, and right now, I think you'll be able to go home then if you wish to. But I want you to consider spending a day or two more with us. In three days, you won't be very comfortable on your own."

Her mutant braid flowed from behind each ear to join below her throat, and he realized suddenly that she was beautiful behind those glasses.

Yeah, so what. She'd seen him naked and prob'ly hadn't liked what she saw. He glowered in self-protection.

He was wrong; she hadn't seen him nude, although it was close, and being a medical professional she hadn't passed judgment on what she had seen. (Were she off-duty, she'd have liked what she did see. There is, as the wise ones have said, absolutely no accounting for taste.)

She had been to see him the first time shortly after the triage healer finished her work, before the General's displeasure was made known. In fact he had been naked then, except for the eye patch, wound dressings, and a strategically-placed fold of sheet. He was very cold, and had been so for some time; he was awake enough to feel the discomfort, not aware enough to move and remedy it.

She didn't need to move the sheet and saw no reason to, having seen it all before. She also saw no defensive wounds anywhere on his body, nothing that might have happened when an opponent's blade (or claws or teeth) slid off the hilt of a sword and dinged the sword-wielder's knuckles, thigh, or forearm. Instead, there were long, deep slashes in the sparse muscular flesh of his chest and belly, wounds coming dangerously close to major organs. In all her professional career Retsu Unohana had never seen so much damage without defensive wounds somewhere, but he had none, none at all. She had said, "Zaraki-taichou, what moved you to take this kind of punishment?"

He remembered. He remembered the compassion in her tone, and the respect.

She gently put fresh dressings on his wounds, pulled a sheet and warmed blanket up over his gooseflesh, improved his life considerably by specifying in her notes that he was to be kept warm and checked on more frequently than he had been, and left him to write her report. She'd already seen Kuchiki.

When summoned to General Yamamoto's office a few hours later, Retsu Unohana came to a stop in front of his desk.

He rose, got himself a cup of tea, put another on the side of his desk. "Have a seat, Retsu," he said to her. "I hope it won't be a problem that you'll be here a while."

"No, sir," she said calmly. "I planned for it. Are you ready?" General Yamamoto nodded.

She turned her cup around on its saucer, not meeting his eyes. She had to give her boss news that was, if not unwelcome, unexpected. "Both men's wounds were inflicted by Hollows' claws and teeth." She paused, looked at him. "Despite bystander testimony to the contrary, I think that speaks to there being no duel." He nodded again, but she had seen him relax. "They may well have gone outside the walls to fight each other, but my guess is that they got there separately, Kuchiki first. He was attacked by more than one Hollow, somehow before he could draw his zanpakuto – he has no defensive wounds, and his servant's fingerprints but not his own are on the hilt of his sword – and Zaraki went to his aid. Zaraki also has no defensive wounds, and I believe that he didn't defend himself because he knew that Kuchiki was critically injured, and he could dispose of the Hollows more quickly that way." She had a sip of tea. "There may be some other way of explaining this, but I can't think of it. Also, Zaraki's sword has traces of Hollow ichor but none of Kuchiki's reiatsu."

"You're sure of all this?" the General asked her. He'd been making notes, put his brush down.

"Of all of it but Zaraki-taichou's motivation in foregoing to defend himself," she said. "There, I think his awareness of the gravity of Kuchiki-taichou's condition is the only logical explanation. At least, it's the simplest."

"All right." The General signed and sealed the paper that got the two men out of chains and comas, rang for a messenger. "Fourth Division," he said, handing over the paper. The man bowed and left. "Retsu, do you think they intended to duel?"

"Yes, sir," she said quietly, "for three reasons. First, they sent their fuku-taichou, along with Zaraki-taichou's third seat, away before they left. Second, Kuchiki-taichou goes out of his way to bait Zaraki-taichou. He did so that night, and Zaraki-taichou gave as good as he got. Third, they planned to meet outside the walls of the city, not far from where Kuchiki was attacked." She sighed, rubbed her forehead. "All of that is bystander testimony, sir. The bystander is the barkeep who served them. He says he doesn't drink on duty, and his boss thinks that's true. And taichou had both been drinking. Their rooms stank of those metabolites when I first saw them."

The General wanted to say "Ick" but tapped his fingers on the desk instead. "Did Zaraki know he was taking a substantial personal risk to get Kuchiki to help in time?"

Her eyes blazed, and the General saw what Retsu Unohana showed few of her patients: the steel of her character beneath the velvet of her caring. "Yes, he did. I've made sure that everyone, from the incoming class at Soul Academy all the way up through the taichou, knows how dangerous considerable exertion is once you're wounded."

"These freakin' heroes." The general tapped his desk again. "I don't know what to do about this. From what you say, they clearly intended to duel, but they didn't get the opportunity to do so."

"Intent follows the sword," she said, stating a legal maxim. "My witnesses' names are in the report."

"Ha. I knew you'd be thorough. Well, witnesses or not, if intent follows the sword they had no intent. I won't be able to ding 'em for the fine."

Now, in his hospital room, Retsu Unohana, having single-handedly averted a considerable financial disaster for him, shut Kenpachi Zaraki's clipboard and said, "So you're doing fine. Take it easy, Zaraki-taichou. If you get hungry, ring for a meal; if you get tired, sleep."

He was so surprised he stopped a fork full of food halfway to his maw. "That's it? That's all I gotta do?"

She deepened her smile. "We'll see if you can make it through three days of enforced idleness. And please, do consider staying with us another day or two."

"All right," he said. He didn't mean it. She probably knew that.

The patient ate those first three breakfasts, and shoveled in two more before he pushed his meal tray away to bellow, "Third!"

Yumichika Ayasegawa poked his head inside the room. "Cap, I'm on duty. Will I do? I'm prettier."

"Yeah, Fifth. Can we get a wheelchair? 'M feelin' like a mushroom in here. I want some sun."

It tired him less to go from bed to chair this time, although it still hurt him. Yumichika pushed him into the hospital's sun room.

Yumichika prattled while he did this. But that didn't matter, because Zaraki wasn't listening.

The occupants of the sun room suddenly found other places to be upon Zaraki's arrival. He turned his face up to the warmth and light, and the hell with all of 'em.

Back in his room, warmed through for the first time in days, he ate four hospital lunches. Pushing his meal tray away, Zaraki said, "Okay, how deep's the paperwork?"

Ikkaku had carefully coached Yumichika. "Don't show him more than twelve sheets at a time," he'd said. "If you do he'll throw it at you and tell you to sign it your own damned self."

Yumichika carefully counted out ten papers and brought them to Zaraki, along with a pen and taichou's reading glasses.

Zaraki put the lenses on, and pushed them into place with a bony middle finger. He read the first paper, signed it, reached for the second. The glasses skidded down his bony nose. Zaraki again made the finger gesture of glasses placement, impolite version, read and signed. Four more papers, four more signatures, four more middle fingers raised to the ravages of age.

Zaraki looked his fifth seat in the eyes after those papers. "This all?"

"Not by a long shot, Cap."

Zaraki threw the last four papers at Yumichika. "Get out. Sign 'em yer own damned self. I gotta sleep."

Yumichika, collecting the papers, grinned. Six signatures! He hadn't dared to hope for more than four.

* * *

The next time Kenpachi Zaraki woke, Yachiru was carefully fashioning his hair into its usual spikes while she sang two and five-sevenths lines of a song over and over and over again.

Kenpachi lay relaxed; he knew that having someone else style your hair was weird, but he couldn't seem to care ... and this was Yachiru, whom he loved with all of his scarred, starved heart. Anything she did was all right with him. Eyes closed, he simply enjoyed the touch of her small hands.

The little bells he favored tinkled as she fastened them to the tips of the spikes.

She finished, stopped singing. Had she left him? "Yachiru?"

"Kenny!" She scrambled onto his bed; he carefully masked the wince this caused him. "I'm so glad ta see ya! You was really sleepy the last time I saw ya."

He put his arms around her. "Yeah. I got a little sick."

"It wasn' th' Hollows?"

"They got me some, but I shouldna run as hard as I did before I got well from that."

"But if you hadn't, th' prissy idiot woulda died."

He hugged his little girl gently. "Yer right. So I made th' choice I thought was best, and that put me in here."

"I'm mad at the prissy idiot 'cause helpin' him made ya sick."

So many things wrong with that sentence, where to begin ... the simple stuff first, thought Zaraki, doing his overmatched best to be Yachiru's parent. "Kid, I call him that, but don'cha do it too."

"Is that because yer bein' rude again, Kenny?"

"Yes. Don't you be. That means not callin' him 'princess' either."

She looked into his stone-dark eyes, confusion in her own. "But Kenny, it's true! He's a princess _an'_ a prissy idiot!"

His grave voice was gentle. "Yachiru, I know that an' you know that. But ta be polite we keep it secret from everybody else, and 'specially from him, okay?"

"Okay," she said, and put her soft little hand on his cheek. "I still don't like him for makin' ya sick."

"Better ta be mad at me, Yachiru." He patted her back gently.

"How come, Kenny?"

"Who chose ta flash-step, him or me?"

Yachiru's face fell, and she was silent for a long moment. "I guess it was you."

"So shouldn't ya be mad at me?"

"It's easier ta be mad at him."

"Yeah, 'Chiru, but it ain't honest." He fell silent, had no more to say.

She was quiet too, having some things to think over.

They simply lay still for a while, content: physically comfortable, and together. The second had been true as long as Yachiru could remember, the first never common, and Zaraki knew she was enjoying it as much as he.

Yachiru played with his hair and began singing her song again. He was charmed. This was the only child he might ever raise, and anything she did was okay by him.

Except calling Byakuya Kuchiki "prissy idiot" and "princess," of course ...

He was falling asleep again. He roused himself with an effort. "Kid, do somethin' for me, not right now, maybe in a coupla days."

"Sure, Kenny. What is it? Can I have some candy fer it?"

"Yeah, I guess so." Note ta self: ask Ikky ta buy it at the _end_ o' his shift, and let 'im get someone who deserves ratin' ta babysit after. "Before he wakes up, I wantcha ta put Kuchiki-taichou's hair back in its 'do. It's gettin' all messy. He wouldn't like wakin' up like that."

"Is he sick too?"

"No. He just got Hollowed."

"Okay, then."

"Thanks, kid."

"Kenny, ya ain't like ya us'lly are."

"No, kid. I'll be better soon."

"Good. I like ya any way ya are, but I like yer other way better." Yachiru snuggled in closer to Kenpachi's heart, so that she could listen to it beat as she fell asleep.

* * *

Three days later, Yachiru walked into Byakuya Kuchiki's hospital room, to be confronted by Renji Abarai. "What do you want, fukutaichou?" the redhead growled, stacking papers he was preparing for Kuchiki's signature. Somewhen, down the line.

"My Kenny asked me ta come an' do Kuchiki-taichou's hair fer him," Yachiru said calmly, setting out implements and supplies on the bedside table. She wasn't afraid of Renji, whom she held in contempt for having left the Eleventh for the Sixth. She knew he was a little more sane than Ikkaku Madarame, her sometime babysitter. "He said th' prissy idiot wouldn't like wakin' up all messy." She covered her mouth, looked at Renji. "Oops. Kenny said I shouldn' oughta call him that."

"No. You shouldn't." Renji got up, and examined all the things Yachiru had brought with her. They were what they seemed to be, but in Renji's world, you rarely regretted taking precautions that proved unnecessary.

He watched as her tiny fingers laced through taichou's hair. It seemed to him that she was doing what she said, and only what she said, so when nature called, he told her, "Listen, I'm going down the hall for a minute. You need something, the guy on the door'll get it for you."

"Okay," Yachiru said. "Bring me a candy bar when you come back, Pinkytail."

Renji, no longer in fukutaichou Yachiru's Division or not, knew an order when he heard one. He surrendered the watch over his superior to the seated officer on duty just outside Kuchiki's door, and went.

Yachiru had combed the prissy idiot's front and side hair and begun to part it when Renji left. She was mostly done with putting the top section into its decorative holders when Byakuya Kuchiki's voice, burry with drowsiness, said, "Min?" What was his personal servant doing here?

"No, ya prissy idiot - wait, I shouldna called ya that - ya Kuchiki-taichou. It's Yachiru."

Had he heard that right? "Yachiru? Fukutaichou 11th?"

"Yeah."

Kuchiki's mind made a dart into had-Zaraki-sent-her-and-if-so-why, but he was too muzzy to follow a trail of deduction. He did wonder vaguely if she were tethering poisonous spiders to his hair as a way to kill him; he remembered working out that strategy when he was about her age.

When he had enough energy, he thought, to cope with the answer, he asked her, "Fukutaichou, why are you here ... doing this?"

"My Kenny told me you wouldn't like wakin' up all messy. – I like yer scarf. It's pretty an' soft."

Weariness swamped him. He needed to sleep. "I'm glad you like it. Will you thank your Kenny for me?"

"Ya can thank me yerself," Zaraki growled from the doorway. _M'first day back on m'feet, an' I come here. I must be crazy ..._

The other man rallied. "Zaraki-taichou, it was a kind thought."

"It was a freakin' practical necessity. Prissy idiot ya may be, but ye're the strongest tactician we got. I don' wancha dyin' o' shame because yer hair ain't just so, Kuchiki-taichou." Zaraki came in from the doorway, sat heavily in the chair beside the bed.

Kuchiki dredged up a smile from somewhere. Zaraki, who saw the blue under his eyes again, said, "Pack up yer stuff, Yachiru. Kuchiki-taichou's tired."

"Princesses get tired," Yachiru said happily.

"Yachiru!"

She totally failed to look abashed, but she said, "Sorry, Kenny. Sorry, Kuchiki-taichou."

Renji Abarai, who, having served under him, was not afraid of Kenpachi Zaraki beyond a certain reasoned, well-thought-out terror, returned to taichou's bedside. "Taichou?" he asked his superior. "Is there anything I can do for you?" _Like maybe get myself killed trying to heave taichou out?_

Kuchiki said, "No, thank - " Yachiru overrode him to ask,"Didja bring me my candy?"

Wordlessly, Renji pulled it from his pocket. Zaraki stood, and his huge hand came down from the heavens to take it from him, and keep it from her.

"Hey!" Yachiru said. "That's _mine_!"

Zaraki, who had an evil thought, grinned. "In a little while, Yachiru. –Abarai, call yer replacement. We'll leave when he gets here."

"Why?"

"You give Yachiru sugar, you can babysit her until she comes down. I ain't up to it."

Kuchiki laughed, which hurt. He wrapped an arm around himself. "Call it a training session, Renji. Yachiru?"

"Yeah?"

"Thank you for doing my hair."

"Yer welcome, princess."

"Yachiru!" growled her superior officer.

Kuchiki hurt too much to laugh again.

* * *

"Sorry," said the small Fourth Division member who was Zaraki's intake healer, and thus made his medical decisions. "You're just not ready to go home yet."

Kenpachi Zaraki growled at her. She remained unmoved. He tried the snarl. It enjoyed an equal lack of success. The growl, the snarl, the glower solo, the glower-and-snarl, and physical violence were his only tools. Since the healer had previously proven herself immune to the glower alone, and even Zaraki knew that physical violence was out of the question, he tried the glower-and-snarl.

"Sorry," she said in answer to a maneuver that had left many seated officers in his Division trembling and having bad dreams. "I'd be irresponsible to send you home. We'll try again in two days. I'm pretty sure you'll be ready then, or the day after." She paused. "A lot more likely the day after, though."

He looked up at the ceiling, which he seemed to be doing a lot around the members of the Fourth Division. He put away the various weapons at his command, since they hadn't worked, and said in normal tones, "What about tomorrow?"

He would never know how relieved the healer was. She shook her head. "I can't see how you'd get your strength back that fast, but we'll test again tomorrow. That's the best I can do."

"All right," he said tiredly. His fatigue after this brief an argument let him know that she was right - not that he would ever communicate such! - and he settled into his bed. "If I gotta."

"Afraid so," the healer said calmly, made a note in his chart, and left his room at a carefully deliberate pace. She said to support staff back at the central kiosk, "Look, I'm going to go out and run a mile. Back in fifteen, twenty minutes."

One of them smiled at her. "Been to see Zaraki, have you?" For the rest of his life, among Fourth Division members, those who badly needed a break had "been to see Zaraki."

* * *

The rest of that day, the next, and the day after, when anyone except Yachiru came into Kenpachi Zaraki's hospital room, he snarled, "Yeah, whaddaya want?" at them. Had Yachiru been old enough, the Fourth Division would have drafted her to bring him his meals.

His mood was not improved when, as the healer predicted, he failed her first test.

As for Yumichika and Ikkaku, their lives were not worth living. Both men watched the clock. Seventy-two hours, seventy-one hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds ...

Suddenly it was forty-eight hours. On her second visit, carried out the next day, the healer said, "Well, my best guess is that you can leave tomorrow, Zaraki-taichou." Was there relief in her tone?

"Tomorrow!" There was none in his.

"Yes. Sorry. See you this time tomorrow."

Twenty-four hours fifty-nine minutes and fifty-nine seconds ...

Zero hours, zero minutes, and three seconds.

"Okay, Zaraki-taichou. You're cleared for takeoff." The healer drew the double line under her last entry on Zaraki's chart, telling other healers that this hospital stay was at an end.

"Good." Her late patient stood up, and up, and up - she had forgotten how tall he was - and shed his bed clothes, grumped into his shikahoushou and haori, and stamped out of the hospital.

The healer shook her head, having just seen a lot more of him than she wanted to, put his clipboard away, took a tissue out of her pocket, and blotted the drops of sweat off her forehead.

Never, ever again. She'd let him bleed to death right in front of her before she ever treated Kenpachi Zaraki again.

* * *

In six more days Kenpachi Zaraki was enough himself to be annoyed by the constant company of his "babysitters," as he was careful to call them, just to watch them wince.

Three days later, he rose from a table at the Eleventh Division mess, said, "I'm goin' out, and I expect ta be alone. If ya feel like ya gotta follow me, I don't wanna see yer ugly faces. If I do see ya, I ain't gonna be responsible."

His tall figure walked foursquare out the doors. There was a whispered conference among the seated officers, and a new recruit who had not yet been introduced to his formidable taichou was told he had bodyguard duty. "Stay with 'im," Ikkaku said, handing the man one of the cell phones. "If he's in trouble, call one on speed dial."

"Think he'll make it back alive?" Yumichika said, watching the new recruit do his poor best to be unnoticed.

"Taichou? Yeah. The newbie, fifty-fifty chance," Ikkaku said. "Taichou don't know him by sight, and he, taichou, ain't up to speed yet. Worth more than my life or yours to tell him that, though."

"Well, it wouldn't be my choice of a way to die," Yumichika said. "Not at all esthetically pleasing." He finished the last dainty bite of his meal.

"Be okay if you liked the color of your own blood," Ikkaku said.

* * *

Zaraki found his way barred here and there. He resolved this issue of access by glower-and-snarling at those whose misfortune it was to guard against the likes of him.

There were some in the Court of Pure Souls who wondered if the glower-and-snarl were Zaraki's _impression_ of a psychopath; the man could, after all, do paperwork, an informal hallmark of sanity.

Consensus was that if it was an impression it was an awe-inspiringly good one. This day it left a shopkeeper and a Sixth Division seated officer cowering and gibbering. That seated officer had been on watch outside Byakuya Kuchiki's hospital room.

Inside the room, Renji said, "Zaraki-taichou?" as if he couldn't believe his eyes, or perhaps his bad luck.

Zaraki rumbled, "Yeah. I come to keep the prissy - er. _Taichou_ some company."

Kuchiki, who did not look overjoyed at the prospect, signed a paper handed him by Renji and said nothing.

The big man took silence for assent. He thumped a heavy bag onto the floor, pulled a bottle of good saké out of it, and gave it to Renji, along with one of the square wooden cups used for the wine. "Here. Ya did good watchin' Yachiru. 'Dja mind gettin' drunk somewhere else? I wanna talk ta taichou alone."

Renji opened the bottle, poured the cup full to the brim, drank it dry, repeated the procedure, put cup and nearly-empty bottle back down onto taichou's bedside table, picked up the papers he had brought to Kuchiki, said, "No, I don't mind," and left.

Zaraki grinned at his disappearing back. "I like that kid."

Kuchiki managed a smile. "I do too. –Can I have some of that?"

"I brought enough for both a' us. It won't curdle yer blood, will it, since I still see that healin' light all around ya?"

"I don't care if it does. Fourth Division can uncurdle it later."

Zaraki grinned. "You ain't bad fer a prissy idiot."

Kuchiki found himself returning the smile. It was easier this time. "Yachiru called me that while she was doing my hair."

"I told her not ta call ya that no more, and not 'princess' neither. An' I won't either, at least not around other people."

Byakuya's eyebrows rose. But all he said was, "She corrected herself to 'ya Kuchiki-taichou,'" "Thank you" being, at this moment, beyond him.

Zaraki, unaware or at any rate uncaring of Kuchiki's reticence, grinned and kept his eyes on his busy hands. "She's smart. It was nice o' ya ta send her a green scarf like yers. She wears it ta th' fukutaichous' meetin's, and th' Women's Association." He finished setting up a saké warmer and lit its candle, pulled out two more cups, and then another bottle of saké, this one already warm and wrapped in heavy wool to keep it so.

The green scarf under discussion looked like Kuchiki's own but was much sturdier. He knew what an appropriate gift for a tomboy/hellion/force of nature of Yachiru's years was, and something as fragile (not to mention expensive) as his own scarf wasn't it. "She sent me a thank-you note."

"I didn' know she could write that good."

"Oh, it doesn't have any words. It has pink stars and rainbows. Don't you think that must be a thank-you note?"

Zaraki grinned with all the fond pride of a parent. "Prob'ly. She's awful pleased with that scarf. –So ya want yer saké warmed or chilled?"

"Warmed, please." Kuchiki fiddled with the blanket over his knees. "I don't know how to thank you for what you did out there."

"No need," Zaraki said, pleasantly for him. "We're on th' same side." He unwrapped the warmed bottle, and put the chilled bottle on the warmer.

"I wouldn't have thought of this," Kuchiki said. "You're no mean strategist."

"Not in yer league."

"You could be."

"I'm pretty good on th' ground," said the current holder of the title of kenpachi, the best swordsman in the Sereitei, "but I got no trainin' in th' overview o' things. An' that's whatcha need fer strategy." The big man's knot-fingered, bony hands delicately poured from the warmed bottle into two cups; he put them both into Byakuya's reach, and smiled. "Works a little faster if it's warmed."

Byakuya smiled back, and chose a cup. "Yes, and isn't that nice. –If you decide you want to learn the overview, I'll teach you."

Kenpachi took the other cup. "Yeah? Thanks. If I take ya up on that, it may be a little later on. Ya know, people think I'm stupid because I never got much education. It ain't exactly true."

Byakuya took a sip, looked critically at the cup. "This is nice saké. –I knew you weren't stupid, but most people are too frightened of your temper, not to mention your fighting ability, to find that out."

"Hunh. You ain't scared a' either."

The clan leader snorted. "I've been heir-apparent or clan leader ever since I can remember. _No_body in my life except General Yamamoto has more power than I do. Other people's tempers have never mattered, because I've got the power and they don't."

"Yeah?" said Kenpachi. "Since I came into my own powers, I never pay 'em much mind either. They gimme enough lip, I kill 'em."

One of Byakuya's eyebrows went up. The Sixth Division's taichou went on, "As for your fighting ability, I'd have to invoke bankai to beat you. I've seen you fight without the eye patch, and I can't be certain that with my bankai against your full reiatsu, either of us would survive." He shrugged. Which hurt.

"Best we met th' Hollows, then, and didn't face each other." Kenpachi added calmly, as he rotated the warming bottle, "You got quite a talent for bein' annoyin'. The things ya say about me are pretty funny sometimes."

"This from the man who calls me 'princess' and 'prissy idiot.'"

Kenpachi grinned at him. "That's 'cause I'm a 'lout' an' a 'oaf.'"

Byakuya laughed at this direct quotation of himself. Laughing still nipped a bit, enough to make him wince.

Kenpachi carefully ignored this intimation of fragility and said, "Didja know that Abarai taught me about warmin' saké?"

"Renji? He has a good heart."

"Yeah, he does. A funny thing to find in a seated officer. –I worry about Ikkaku, though." Kenpachi picked up his cup again. "He's my third seat, but with Yachiru so young he's the closest thing I got ta th' kinda fukutaichou the resta ya got."

"I can see that you'd need someone who was physically adult to do some things. But why do you worry about him?"

"Ikky's smart, and when he don't think anybody's watchin', he's kind. He's a lot kinder'n he useta be, matter o' fact. I wanna keep him from killin' himself in battle until he grows up a little more. Maybe then he can figure out for himself that you don't haveta be all alone in this world. I hope he does that before he becomes th' next kenpachi."

Byakuya cocked an eyebrow. "He'll never challenge you."

Kenpachi looked Byakuya fully in the eyes for the first time since the discussion had begun. "I'm older'n he is by a good bit. He'll be able ta beat me eventually. Till then, he's kinda taken on th' job o' being fuku-kenpachi, figurin' that if a challenger can't beat him, the guy can't beat me either. If somebody challenges me, I don't haveta face the man until he's beat Ikkaku. And knowin' Ikkaku, he won't quit until he's dead."

Byakuya looked across at the scarred hulk. Whatever else he thought of Kenpachi, that the fellow could inspire such loyalty made Byakuya envious; he didn't believe that any member of the Sixth Division would die for him, take for him the chances Ikkaku Madarame took for Kenpachi Zaraki.

He greatly wronged Renji Abarai in so thinking.

But, speaking of risking your life: "Is that why you trust him with Yachiru?"

"No," Kenpachi said, which surprised Byakuya. "It's because takin' care a' her brings out th' best in him. I made a will givin' him an' Yumi custody o' Yachiru when I die. I can't think what else ta do fer Ikky. I'm hopin' that takin' care'a Yachiru will save him. It saved me."

"Will that be best for Yachiru?" For gods' sake, man, you'd put that bald maniac in charge of the pink-haired maniac! What are you _thinking_!

Kenpachi said, "I hope so. It's kinda hard to thinka anybody who can keep up with her. He comes closest; it's kinda like they were the same age." Kenpachi continued to turn his cup around and around in his big hands, watching it, avoiding eye contact with Byakuya. Finally he said, "Ikky's saner than people give him credit for. He's in love with fightin'. Otherwise I'd'a bounced him already. You mighta noticed I been gettin' ridda the ones who like ta kill as fast as I find 'em." He glanced at Kuchiki and away again.

The changes Kenpachi had wrought in Eleventh Division (some by the paperwork and some by the sword) had been a subject of common discussion for a while now in the ryokan of Rukongai. "It's been noted," Byakuya said dryly. He had some more wine. Then he drained his glass and half-asked, "You have a reputation for going berserk in a fight."

Kenpachi got busy refilling both their cups. "I don't haveta do that so much anymore. When me and Yachiru was on our own, I hadda be sure that either we was safe, or we was both dead. I hadda better chance o' comin' outta a fight alive, maybe even unwounded, if I went berserk. It was safer ta fight like that. Now that I know Yachiru'll be taken care of when I die in battle, I can go berserk or not, dependin'."

_He said "when," not "if,"_ Byakuya thought. But what he said was, "Did you go berserk to become taichou of the 11th?"

"Nah. I remember that fight, an' I don't track 'em so well when I'm berserk."

"What about our friends?"

"I needed ta get that over with fast. It was a simple chop-an'-slash job, nothin' more."

Byakuya shook his head. "That many, and you call it simple!"

Kenpachi looked at him, surprised. "It was, though. I was disappointed that havin' to get through so many of 'em so fast didn't make it any more fun."

Byakuya shook his head again. "If they hadn't hit me I'd have had trouble getting through that many at once."

Kenpachi looked critically at his cup, at Byakuya, back at his fascinating rice wine. Then he said, quite diffidently, "Y'know, I figured out a long time ago that my way o' lookin' at fightin' was different than most people's. Everybody else fights because they gotta, and not too many of 'em think about it when they ain't trainin' or practicin'. I like fightin', so I think about it a lot. I'm alive when I fight, and I can almost feel like that when I'm thinkin' about it. 'S better'n' almost anything." He gave the cup an experimental twirl or two. "You think about it long and hard enough, and you start doin' it differently'n other people do it."

Byakuya began to appreciate that what the Hollows had done to him was a stroke of luck, not an absence thereof, and had some more saké to celebrate not having to face this man.

As alcohol often does, the rice wine diverted the conversational flow. Kenpachi slanted a look at Byakuya, said, "What's gettin' ta bankai like?"

Byakuya picked up his cup, spilling only a little of it in the process, and took the level down a bit more. "It's the most intimate thing you can imagine. It beats sex."

Kenpachi nearly dropped his own cup. "You're kiddin'! Even killin' some bastard deserves it ain't that good."

Byakuya had long entertained a certain speculation about Kenpachi: that the man was so formidably unattractive no woman would willingly endure his company, even for large amounts of money. He had forgotten that the exceedingly tough ones have a draw all their own. Not the rude or the cruel ones, but the granite-hard tough, who are unafraid to look any problem in the eye and solve it, at whatever cost to themselves.

Perhaps he did not know this because he, too, was one of the exceedingly tough ones. (Modestly, he laid his own successes in the lists of love at the collective feet of his position, his money, and his pretty face. Silly fellow.)

The other way in which Byakuya's thinking about Kenpachi was erroneous had to do with sanity. Byakuya thought the man was crazy. Kenpachi actually was quite sane, and had a good, if uneducated, mind, but he was a true eccentric. Crazy's rarely sexy, but eccentricity, smarts, and toughness are a combination attractive across many levels of the female population present _anywhere_.

Kenpachi, in fact, routinely had more offers of sex than he could handle. In the ryokan of the Court of Pure Souls it was usually Ikkaku, as well as anyone standing next to him unless that was Yumichika, who benefitted from the overflow. It wasn't the only reason Ikkaku liked hanging out with his superior officer, but it was close to the top.

Even though he did not know that, and probably would have fastidiously shuddered if told, for Byakuya there was no more need to speculate about the big man's love life. The clan leader said, "No, I'm not kidding. Having your sword unite with you is better than making love."

"Don't yer sword talk ta ya if ya get ta bankai?" Kenpachi knocked back a gulp of saké that might have felled a small tree. "I can't get a single word outta mine."

"Oh?"

"I try whenever I got a little time, and Yachiru's in bed. Tried lotsa times. He stays silent."

"Yes, the sword talks to you. Before you reach bankai, in fact, along the way."

"Hunh." The big man felled another tree to help him think. He watched Byakuya sip his own wine with the good manners the clan leader had so long internalized that they were, by now, second nature.

Kenpachi didn't feel his usual rage at this manifestation of privilege. Maybe lugging the prissy jerk across miles an' miles o' bloody nothin', both of 'em bleedin' while he was at it, meant that they were both just Soul Reapers, no difference between 'em.

Byakuya, unaware of this newfound unilateral equality, wasn't finished with the subject. He said, thoughtfully, "You know ... some swords are feminine."

Kenpachi rocked backward. "What? I never even thought'a that!"

"Something to consider."

Kenpachi shook his head. He'd always addressed his weapon as if it were male. To talk to it as if it were a woman ... to wield a female sword ... no. He refused absolutely to consider this possibility. Even tough guys have their limits.

Byakuya considered his saké, glanced at Kenpachi and said, "You taught - _thought_ - about going to Kisuke Urahara, in the human world, and asking him for help to get to bankai? He got the Ichigo brat there very quickly."

"I ain't thought about goin' to the human world at all. I gotta hunch I'll be even uglier there than I am here."

"Really, Zaraki-taichou, you aren't _that_ ugly," Retsu Unohana said crisply, coming in.

"Did I ask ya to tell me whatcha think o' my face?" snarled Kenpachi, using the glower with it.

... Still, she didn't think he was _that_ ugly. Somewhere in the dark recesses of a riddled heart, he danced and sang.

"No, you didn't ask me," Unohana said, somehow shrugging off glower-and-snarl, standing so close to him he could smell aloeswood (and she could smell organically-processed expensive saké). She didn't have her eyes on his, was reading her patient's end-of-bed clipboard.

Byakuya snorted. Kenpachi focused the world-class glower on him.

Unohana had raised her hands to check on her patient, but said, "Stop that," to Kenpachi. She didn't want to perceive that glower thing energetically, and who could blame her? Kenpachi's eyebrows escalated halfway to his hairline, but the glower grumbled to a halt and folded up on itself in an ill-tempered heap.

Unohana held her hands out toward Byakuya, and concentrated. Then she did the same thing for Kenpachi.

The healer dropped her hands and said in the same calm tone she had used throughout, "Getting drunk has set both your recoveries back a few days. When the hangover arrives, Zaraki-taichou, come to my office and I'll give you a couple of breaths of concentrated reiatsu. It'll help. Kuchiki-taichou, you'll be wearing a mask for a couple of days."

Kenpachi Zaraki rolled his eyes. "I can't go ta th' infirmary fer a hangover. My squad'll never respect me again."

Byakuya saw the corners of Unohana's eyes crinkle, but all she said was, "Suffer, then, Zaraki-taichou. Kuchiki-taichou, if you drank so much you're going to vomit, you're in for a very painful experience." She made a note in Kuchiki's chart, her writing a little larger than it usually was because she had to take her irritation at these two out on _something_, and then she swept out through the door, not quite slamming it after herself.

The air stilled in her wake, while the two taichou watched their saké carefully to see if any further thoughts lurked within its depths. None materialized.

"She's gotta way a' pullin' th' plug on a party," Kenpachi said eventually.

"She always has had. Rumor has it she's a terror when she finally lets her hair down."

"Yeah. She's got th' marks." Something occurred to him. "When didja see 'er do that?"

"I din't, I mean di_d_n't. I've never talked to anyone who has. It's just a rumor. –What marks?"

"Th' calm eyes and th' full mouth."

"How'd you know that?"

"I met a lotta women over the years." Kenpachi grinned, had some more saké.

Byakuya, less experienced, did not doubt Kenpachi. He raised his drink, but the room began to slide sideways under him in a way he knew well and loved not at all. "I'm done," he said, and pushed the cup, still half-full, back across the bedside tray. "Push the wastebasket over here?"

"Princess."

"The princess is about half your size," Byakuya said dryly, "and lacks your capacity for saké."

Kenpachi drained his cup, took up Byakuya's and drained it too, regarded the empties morosely. "Everybody does," he said sadly, which made Byakuya laugh again.

Kenpachi, grinning, lurched to his feet and put the wastebasket beside the bed. "If ya got ta the pukin' stage, I'm leavin'. Ye'll have to hold yer own hair back." The big man began to gather the crime scene into the bag he'd brought with him: bottles, warmer, cups.

"Yachiru put it into a ponytail for me a day or so ago."

"I didn't tell her ta do that."

"No, it was her idea. You're doing a good job with her."

The tops of the big warrior's cheeks turned red. He knotted the bag, yanked the knot tight, then looked over at Byakuya. "Thanks. I appreciate knowin' that you think so. Rukia, she's turnin' out all right too."

"I can't take any credit for that; Rukia deserves it herself. She was almost an adult before we adopted her into the clan," the other said, looking down at the hands in his lap.

Kenpachi was saying, "It's still a worry when she's with that Ichigo kid, though. He's gotta way a' drawin' trouble."

Byakuya laughed a short and bitter laugh. "That damned ryoka."

"Kid's th' hell of a good fighter. What's yer beef with 'im?"

"He knows nothing of our traditions and our ways. That's not his fault, of course, but he's shown no willingness to learn them. Worse, he's a living person, and he's allowed Rukia to fall in love with him. But because of the difference in rates of aging, he's going to break her heart by growing old and dying." He'd skipped the part about the brat's insolence, Byakuya realized, but let it ride, and dropped his head back to the pillow.

"'s a long list a' reasons," Kenpachi said. "You must really hate that kid."

"Oddly enough, I don't. For one thing, he's a child. For another, his power and his skills are tremendous."

Most likely, Byakuya would have said more, but nausea arrived. Turning a lovely shade of pale green that combined beautifully with his scarf, taichou said, "Best if you go now. I won't be keeping the saké too much longer." He offered his hand to his peer. "Take care, Kenpachi."

Kenpachi shifted his burden, and engulfed the noble's hand in his own. "Nice ta have finally met ya, Byakuya."

Taichou of the Eleventh Division limped back to his quarters. He nodded to the new kid on his door, who had just shuffled himself into position as if he'd been there all along, instead of trailing this maniac around the city for most of the day and losing a week's pay to the guard outside Kuchiki's door into the bargain.

Kenpachi Zaraki went to his bedroom to put the contents of his party-in-a-sack away. This chamber was Spartan from his many years of living on the road, his possessions limited to what he could carry. Then as now, Kenpachi Zaraki had nothing he did not need; the only thing he could not have hit the road with was the large mirror he used to style his hair.

The barrenness of the personal center of his home meant that he saw immediately the stranger: a portable reiatsu tank in a corner of the room.

The note attached to it said, _"Bring it back when you're done. You're cleared to fire your babysitters. Unohana."_

Kenpachi Zaraki smiled as he took the note off the bottle. He put it on his bedside table, and went to check on Yachiru.


End file.
